Focus on brand or performance?
Birgit
Performance and immediate results, or building a strong brand in the long term? Often these two are seen as separate silos, whereas the real power lies in their integration. This is also confirmed by recent WARC research. But why does an integrated approach work best? And what does that mean concretely for your choices?
Performance: immediate results with a ceiling
Research and practice show time and again that performance campaigns deliver fast, measurable results. But there is a limit to what they can do. Based on the 95/5 rule, usually only 5% of the target audience is active in the market. A performance campaign barely reaches the rest. WARC even warns of the advertising doom loop:
Advertising ROI flattens out
Optimizing on incorrect or too short-term metrics
Budget shifts even more toward performance formats... causing the effect to drop further and further.
As Binet & Field have also shown before: performance works quickly, but has a ceiling and drops immediately when you stop. That is why you also need emotion, recognition, and brand building.
Building brands: the foundation of growth
Your customers should already feel something for your brand, not just when they are in the market, but also outside of it. Building brands takes time and must be done consistently, but it yields both short- and long-term results. Cutting too much branding to shift budget towards performance can be harmful—not just for your brand awareness, but even for your performance.
Brands × Performance
Strong brand equity accelerates performance. If potential customers already know your brand and have positive associations, they choose faster when they see a performance ad. Conversely, performance ads reinforce the brand association when someone has a good experience. So it works both ways, and not just in the long term. Clear effects are also visible in the short term.
Budget allocation: how to do it?
Then the question everyone asks: how do you best allocate your budget? The guidelines:
At least 30% to branding; optimally 40–60%
→ This feeds your ‘brand multiplier’: your brand works harder for your performance.Lower SEA budgets where possible.
→ Search engines often give a distorted picture due to last-click attribution.
→ Advice: max. 25% of your total budget to search.
Build, Nudge, Connect
In almost every channel there is both branding and performance. The difference lies in the weight per tool. The combination makes campaigns most effective. Therefore, think less in funnels, and more in three movements:
Build — Build your brand (recognition, emotion, memory structures)
Nudge — Prompt behavior (encourage, activate, guide)
Connect — Connect (clear cues that make finding and buying easy)
By looking at it this way, branding and performance are no longer separate silos, but one system that reinforces each other. Ready to make the connection?